Composing Distributed Fault-Tolerance Components
Sandeep S. Kulkarni, Karun N. Biyani and Mahesh Arumugam
Abstract
In this paper, we show how a distributed fault-tolerance component can be
replaced dynamically. The need for such replacement arises due to the fact that
there are often several fault-tolerance components that are suitable for adding
fault-tolerance to a fault, and the choice of the component depends upon the
environment. Since a distributed fault-tolerance component has a fraction
installed at every process, replacing such a component requires that the
replacement be done consistently. More specifically, it requires that the
dependency among the fractions of the component be handled so that a component
fraction is not removed while other component fractions or the underlying
application depends on it. We show how the dependency relation among component
fractions is correctly handled while ensuring that the component replacement is
transparent to the application. As an illustration of different types of
dependency relations, we present a message communication example and show how
dynamic composition is performed in it. Finally, in our approach, it is also
possible to deal with faults that occur during dynamic composition.
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